Latest revision as of 18:49, 8 August 2008

Contents

Project Description

RUSA has not had a local chapter structure in a good many years. The “Group A” Emerging Leaders from 2007, who were charged with looking at RUSA recruitment issues, identified this as an area where development was needed. RUSA has recently compiled a list of Reference units within the various state and regional ALA chapters, and would like to explore cooperative work or chapter relations with these units. The Emerging Leader group would identify possible areas of cooperation, contact the local units to see how active they are and what level of interest they have in cooperation, and, if warranted, produce a concrete proposal for cooperation or formal chapter relations that could be submitted to the Executive Committee and Board of Directors.

Update to Project Description

February 22, 2008

The project continues to evolve. RUSA is not necessarily just focused on a RUSA chapter plan. The Board will be open to such a plan, if that is the structure that is identified as the best way to approach connections with state and regional organizations. Rather, we want to focus on building relationships with these groups that will go beyond membership recruitment.

"The ultimate goal is to provide information, education and networking opportunities that promote reference service and increase interest (and hopefully membership) at the state and national levels." --From a letter to local orgs by David Tyckoson, RUSA President

Outcomes

RUSA has created a Task Force to develop a plan to ally RUSA with state and regional reference-related organizations. Our goal is to develop a list of what we believe are the most useful ideas for how to create such an alliance, and to share those ideas with the task force.

At this point, just about any collaboration between RUSA and regional organizations is on the table. Our steps now are to review the results of a poll that has already been conducted to gather interest/info from the regional organizations, build on those results by conducting more in-depth interviews and/or a survey of the regionals, and seek models for collaboration that will suit everyone.

Meetings

See the "discussion" tab above for notes from meetings and phone conferences.

People

Groups Members

Nicole Cavallaro

Emily Ford

Kim Leeder

Mentors

Mary Popp

Joseph Yue

Results

To learn about our focus groups and the results of this project, please see our project wiki.